Oh goody...another " *insert MMO title* won't kill WoW' thread.

WHO CARES?

Play whatever you want and enjoy it.

ANet mentioned that if, for example, you are a level 80 player helping out your guild in a level 20 area, you'd be scaled down but would still be fairly powerful in comparison to actual level 20 players. It would most certainly be a stat hit, but would it effect your stats total or just your base (non-gear enhanced) stats?

I have a question about the Sidekick System/level scaling in general.

Does anyone know how this system will work in terms of how stats are effected? Specifically, I'd like to know if your gear scales up or down with you.

Thanks!

I'll likely be getting whatever the most expensive collectors edition is, and the anticipation is...a challenge. But there are some great games coming out this year which will keep me going for a while. 

I'm glad that ANet is releasing it when it's done.

"I'd like to see what you got, as it's hard to spend $15k on a gaming system without trying to be extravagant."

Here's what I came up with...barely broke 10K before taxes.

Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 990X 3.46GHz (Qty: 2) - $2,270.76

EVGA Classified SR-2 Dual Xeon Motherboard - $629.94

Corsair XMS3 Dominator 8GB 2x4GB DDR3-1333 (Qty: 6) - $869.88

EVGA GeForce GTX 580 772MHz 3GB (Qty: 4) - $3,047.32

Mountain Mods Pinnacle 24 Case with 10 PCI back panel - $299.99

Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H60 High Performance CPU Cooler System (Qty: 2) - $149.98

- wasn't sure if these will fit, but that case has a lot of fans, so I think it'd work.

OCZ Talos C Series 960GB 3.5" SAS Sandforce SF-8482 SSD - $2,751.35

LG BH12LS35 Blu-Ray Writer 12x BD-R 16x DVD+R Lightscrivbe 3D Ready SATA - $89.99

Corsair Professional Series Gold CMPSU-1200AX 1200W PSU - $309.99

TOTAL: $10,419.20

Anyway, best I could come up with late at night and in need of sleep. Prices are in Canadian, which is basically the same as USD as far as I know.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Pitt_Hammer

a decent corsair case for probably $50US 

Corsair does not do $50 cases.

"The water-cooler makes it purr at 19°C idle/28°C when I push it."

And a cold room, too, as my room is usually warmer than 19 C, and water cooling can't do sub-ambient temperatures.  Well, either that or the measurements are wrong.

"My budget for my current gaming pc was 15k."

I'd like to see what you got, as it's hard to spend $15k on a gaming system without trying to be extravagant.

"I don't blink an eye if a cpu is $1,800 and everywhere that price is standard."

There aren't any desktop or laptop processors that cost that much.

"After I got back up and running I started up all of my normal games and to my dismay I didn't lose any performance what so ever as a matter of fact I'm noticing less overall lag during certain things that I had before this happend though it could be a fluke But I saved around $400 bucks with the Amd / gigabyte combo and couldn't be happier."

I don't think it should be that surprising that the top bin of AMD's best desktop processor from 2010 beats the bottom bin of Intel's best desktop processor from 2008.  To take a video card analogy, that's kind of like observing that a Radeon HD 6970 is better than a GeForce GTX 260, or that a GeForce GTX 580 is better than a Radeon HD 4830.  If anything, what makes AMD look bad is that, while a Phenom II X6 1100T is better than a Core i7 920, it's not that much better.

If a computer is 2+ years old when it fails, then you should probably replace it with something more modern, and not try to track down the same original parts, especially at the same original price tag.

"And a cold room, too, as my room is usually warmer than 19 C, and water cooling can't do sub-ambient temperatures.  Well, either that or the measurements are wrong."

Ah, I didn't know that...this is my first water cooler. Fortunately, my apartment is pretty cool even though it's still farily warm out where I live. It's kind of weird to have cool air blowing out of the 140mm top fan....I'm not used to that.

Originally posted by Tazlor

Well I'm planning on building a nice gaming computer. So would it be smart to go with an i7? Would I really be gaining enough speed to make it worth the extra money? The price difference is huge.

I got a new system last week which includes an i5-2500K and a GTX 560 Ti...and it's sweeeeeeeet! I'm really looking forward to seeing Rage, BF3 and Skyrim on it. :)

The water-cooler makes it purr at 19°C idle/28°C when I push it.

"The serious gamers who still decide to own a Mac..."

This, sir, is a contradiciton. :)

Originally posted by taylor2144

Personely im not a Mac user, but my friend and i were discussing GW2 last night and he asked me if its realeasing on mac... i havent head a thing about it so i thought id ask you guys ?

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/game-faq/#three

Apparently not.

Originally posted by sonoggi

FYI, ranger's pets are getting major love atm from ANet, as announced in some gw2guru thread a while back. they know pets suck and are working on it.

Sweet! Great news, thanks.

...And thanks fiontar! Great report.

Originally posted by fiontar

Originally posted by zenryoku

Thanks a lot!

It's a shame about the Ranger pet AI/health; hopefully they'll fix that. Traditionally, that kind of pet acts like a tank, but maybe ANet has other ideas for them. I do find it kind of funny (not in a good way) how they've mentioned in a few press conferences (PAX East 2011 I think) that you won't be mashing buttons as much in their game, yet you appeared to be doing just that with your Elementalist. Sounds like they have more tweaking to do with a few things. That's why they call it 'alpha' and 'beta' :)

That's the first shot I've seen of the world zoomed all of the way out, thanks! The game world does look quite large. 

Anyway, thanks again!

Since Star's Elementalist play had so much locked, I'm going to assume that that was with a fresh character. Just like any MMO, you will be unlocking skills as you play the game. There was a link posted recently to 30 minutes of higher level Asura Elementalist demo play, with all the skills and attunements unlocked and there were tons of skills flying around. :)

Edit: Here's a link to the video (in German, but still incredible to watch), plus the link to the thread here on the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irv5PjA1wDM&feature=channel_video_title

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/325532/30-min-full-HD-Gameplay-Video-with-Ingame-Sound.html

I'll check out those links, thanks.

I can see a reason why they'd want to introduce these new mechanics to us gradually; we're all so used to the current mechanics.

I'm pretty confident that I'll be so psyched about the game in general that spamming a few skills for the first little while won't be much of an issue. I do hope they improve Ranger pets though.

Thanks a lot!

It's a shame about the Ranger pet AI/health; hopefully they'll fix that. Traditionally, that kind of pet acts like a tank, but maybe ANet has other ideas for them. I do find it kind of funny (not in a good way) how they've mentioned in a few press conferences (PAX East 2011 I think) that you won't be mashing buttons as much in their game, yet you appeared to be doing just that with your Elementalist. Sounds like they have more tweaking to do with a few things. That's why they call it 'alpha' and 'beta' :)

That's the first shot I've seen of the world zoomed all of the way out, thanks! The game world does look quite large. 

Anyway, thanks again!

Thanks for the details, much appreciated. :)

I have a few questions that you can possibly answer, please.

1) How did you find Ranger and Elementalist? These classes are my favourite types in most MMOs and I'd like to know your impressions of them.

2) You mentioned four huge zones in the game world, but I've always been curious about how large the game world actually is in comparision to WoW, etc. I've seen a map of Tyria, but it doesn't tell me the scale of things. Can you clarify a bit about how large you feel it is? I love to explore in MMOs and enjoy lots of landscape to roam in.

3) Are the UI elements moveable? Specifically, can you move the "target status bar"? I'm not a fan of it being at the top of the screen, but I'll live with it if it is.

Thanks! 

lol, I can't be the only one who noticed this:

"Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the most anticipated games coming down the pike"

It's "coming down the pipe"; a pike is a fish.

Great, thanks all. Looking forward to your write-up on Monday, star.

Originally posted by Alot

Originally posted by zenryoku

Did you happen to notice if gear is customizable after it drops? Like, can you buy/loot augments for it (or made by a crafter)?

Yes, you can.

Sweet, thanks.

Did you happen to notice if gear is customizable after it drops? Like, can you buy/loot augments for it (or made by a crafter)?

Originally posted by star
Loot drops that I've seen have been pretty basic, just a combination of Power/Precision/Tenacity/Toughness and additionally armor for, well, armor.

Class balance feels solid. I've played four (Thief, Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior) and they feel right.... I know in some of the PvP matches as well, the fan team could pick the comp for the dev team, and the devs wiped the floor with them despite wacky comps. I've heard engineers are bait undertuned, but I've also heard they're amazing. Same with the thief, and I think that's just because they both have a fairly high skill cap.

Thanks star.

I actually replied to Lord.Bachus' post before I read yours. Great info. :)

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Originally posted by zenryoku

Not game-breaking for me, but since ANet is being so innovative with everything else, I'm wondering if their loot system is also innovative.

Thanks!

Their loot system is very innovative.... it will be quite easy to get maxed stats when you are max level. The top gear from hard to defeat places and things will be all about the looks...

Thanks, but I wasn't really referring to max level gear. I was referring to loot drops throughout the game; gear that can drop from a regular mob. Will it be vanilla "greens" from a set loot table or will it be more random? 

Like in Diablo 2, any loot that dropped had random stats. Is it like that or is it like all of the other MMOs?

Thanks for the great reporting, star!

I was wondering if you could answer some questions. To what extent, if any, do they offer for item customization? And are loot drops boring like WoW, Rift, etc. or do they seem to be more random (like Diablo 2).

Not game-breaking for me, but since ANet is being so innovative with everything else, I'm wondering if their loot system is also innovative.

Also, how is the balance between classes? Do any seem under/over-powered. I'm not sure how much you observed when you weren't playing, but I think it's an important question.

Thanks!